Slaughter broke in angrily.

"He was the father of my boy. It was why I named him Willy. It is why he
is all my world, ever since his father was taken from me."

"Miss," Slaughter exclaimed, turning to Ailleen again, "it makes me mad
to hear her. She lied of me as she now lies of him, who was my dearest
friend in the old days, the man she led to ruin with the witchery of her
face. It makes me mad, I say," he went on, his voice rising under the
growing fury of his anger. "She wronged me bad enough, but----"

With a sudden access of the frenzy which had seized him when he met
Barber at the Three-mile, he swung round upon the blind woman as she sat
trembling in her chair, with his fists clenched and the evil light of
mania in his eyes. Ailleen, seeing the look and the gesture, sprang at
him and seized his arm.

"Stop!" she cried. "Would you strike a helpless woman like that?"

He looked at her with his blazing eyes.

"A woman?" he said hoarsely. "She's a fiend--a lying fiend. I have
waited to kill her. Now the time has come. Now I can----"

The girl was in front of him, holding both his arms, and looking into
his eyes with a fearless glance.

"You shall not," she said, as she struggled to push him back. "You shall
not harm her. You are mistaken."

"Let me go. She nigh broke your mother's heart," he answered. "I've
waited years. She's not fit to live. She even betrayed McMillan."

"No, no," the blind woman cried; "I did not--I did not! I gave up
everything for him. I loved him."

Unnoticed in the excitement they were labouring under, the air had grown
thicker with the smoke coming from the line of fires which almost
surrounded them to windward. Unnoticed, also, was the figure of a
horseman riding furiously up from the opposite direction. He sprang off
his horse as he caught sight of them through the rapidly deepening haze
of smoke, and, leaping from the ground, he clutched the verandah rail
and pulled himself up.

"Quick for the horses! The fire is on you!" he shouted.

The blind woman started to her feet with a piercing shriek.

"His voice!" she cried. "It is him come back from the dead to save me.
Willy, Willy, my love, oh, come to me!"

She turned to where he was, with outstretched arms, feeling in the air,
helpless in her blindness to do more. Slaughter, with his arms dropped
to his sides, stared vacantly at them. Only Ailleen understood.

"Thank God you've come, Tony!" she exclaimed.

"Where are you